Whole Hog Politics: A guide to knowing who won by bedtime

Watch Whole Hog Politics Live : Hill Insider members can join us live today at 9 a.m. EDT as Chris Stirewalt and host Bill Sammon go deep on this week’s political news. Members can join the discussion and pose their questions to Bill and Chris. Tune in!

The general premise of this note is that normal people want to follow politics, too. OK, maybe “need” is a better word, since wanting to follow politics closely these days would be a sure marker of abnormality.

There are a lot of places where you can go to get a constant transfusion of all the contradictory conjecture, spin, scooplet and data drops that your heart desires. But why do that, when you can pay us to do it for you? We comb through the minutiae and then, taking a longer, broader view, offer you a primer in the hope that we can discard some debris and, with respect for your time and attention, give you a weekly rundown of what’s happening.

This is our last note before the end of a midterm election cycle that began in earnest last spring when Texas kicked off a gerrymandering war, then intensified with off-year contests in Virginia and New Jersey, and then roared into a wild-and-wooly primary season in early 2026.

We’ve been offering you polling averages on President Trump ’s job approval rating and national voters’ preferences for partisan control of Congress. In our final, preelection tabulation we find the president at 34.6 percent, down 6 points from a year ago, and the preference for Democratic control at 52 percent, up 4.8 points from a year ago.

For some basic framing, just imagine that someone told you a year ago that those numbers would have moved in those directions by those amounts. Given the GOP bloodbath that was taking place in Virginia and New Jersey, you’d figure that the midterms would be pretty rough for Republicans. And you would have been right.

For a lot of reasons relating to the gaming of expectations, intraparty positioning, looming presidential nomination contests and the political media’s tendency to build and then break narratives, it feels like the midterm climate has been full of wild swings. But if you skipped the previous 11 months and tuned in for the season finale, you would have missed some truly wild story arcs and crazy characters, but you would certainly know the plot.

Elections are wonderful things. There’s the pageant of democracy and the power of the people to fire their leaders. But there’s also the beautiful quality of their ending . We’ve lived in a world of “the permanent campaign” for decades, but the conclusion of elections, thank God, offers a pause. The people have spoken and everybody has to like it or lump it. The next cycle begins almost at once, but the reality benders of politics and media are, for a time at least, obliged to reset their spin cycles.

How well or poorly you think the parties do next week will mostly depend on your own allegiances. Democrats will be disappointed if they don’t score upsets in several deep-red states, and Republicans will be cheered if they manage to hang on in some places that the president won by more than a dozen points two years ago. Partisanship, it is rightly said, is a hell of a drug.

Now, we want you to stay up all night, glued to your television watching special coverage from NewsNation and the latest race calls from our partners at Decision Desk HQ (DDHQ). While you’re at it, keep refreshing The Hill, clicking with wild abandon on the latest returns. You could rewatch old Whole Hog Politics videos on YouTube on a third screen. And as you stare, bleary-eyed at me, even blearier-eyed, at 2 a.m. EST as we wait for inklings from Alaska’s Mat-Su Valley you can feel that you are truly one with the great demos of the United States.

Or, maybe you have a job. Perhaps you have children who would like breakfast at 7 o’clock in the morning, regardless of how gripping you found the mail-in ballots from Idaho. We’ve got you covered.

We’re going to know a great deal about how the election went by 8 p.m., and by 10 p.m., it’s probably going to be all over but the shouting. We know this for a couple of reasons. First, how the votes are counted doesn’t have anything to do with how they are cast. About half of all ballots will have been submitted prior to Election Day. By that evening, as the polls are starting to close, we will be down to just a handful of stragglers. When you’re watching election coverage, you’re watching an unboxing of a completed product, not the creation of something new.

Second, similar voters tend to vote similarly. We are a wildly diverse continental republic that comprises a dizzying array of cultures and characters. But, with a profoundly nationalized form of politics these days, demographically similar voters in one part of the country tend to behave in similar ways, i.e., married white women with college degrees in Georgia may tend to be more Republican than their counterparts in Washington state, but history tells us that they will swing in similar directions by similar amounts.

Indeed, the country as a whole tends to swing one way or another. There will be some exceptions, and different regions will move more than others, but there will be a theme to the pudding next week. And, luckily, we will get a good taste of what’s happening even before primetime begins as states on the East Coast and in the Midwest start reporting their returns.

How much we will be able to say about the final disposition of the fight for the Senate and the House will depend on how big the swing is. If it’s a bigger blue wave than expected or if Republicans have rallied and rebuilt their red wall, we will be able to draw a lot of conclusions by, say, 8:30 p.m. Conversely, if the polling has been reliable and many of these races really are very close, we’re going to have to wait at least another hour before we get a sense of where the sea of ballots is going to crest.

With that in mind, we’re offering you the Whole Hog Politics guide to the first half of election night, or, if you like, how to sound like a pro to your family and friends even if you actually have a life.

After the jump, we’re going to lay out the poll closings in Eastern Standard Time from 6 p.m. until 9 p.m. We’ll offer you a guide to key races and, crucially, key counties that will tell us how voters are moving. While others are fuming at a graphic that is stuck at “72 percent of expected votes counted,” you’ll be able to zoom in on bellwether counties to see what’s likely to happen in the states and races as a whole.

So, save this email, and, on Tuesday, when you fire up the flatscreen and pass the pork rinds, you’ll be ahead of the game. And when your eyelids get heavy, you can go to bed with a pretty good idea of what you’ll be waking up to, other than a request for sliced bananas in the oatmeal.

Thanks for riding along with us this cycle. We’ll be back next week to tell you what we actually learned from voters and what it means going forward. Happy viewing!

Programming alert: Watch a special, preelection double dose of “The Hill Sunday” with Chris Stirewalt — Catch us at 10 a.m. EST on NewsNation or check your local listings to find the affiliate in your area. Then, stick around for a second hour on NewsNation as we dive deeper into the trends and stories shaping the midterm vote. We’ll have live reports from battleground states, and guests include Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin , former Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel , Jessica Taylor of the Cook Political Report with Amy Walter , Sean Trende of RealClearPolitics, Scott Tranter of Decision Desk HQ, Chuck Lane of the Free Press, and Margaret Talev of Syracuse University.

Holy croakano! We welcome your feedback, so please email us with your tips, corrections, reactions, amplifications, etc. at WholeHogPolitics@TheHill.com . If you’d like to be considered for publication, please include your real name and hometown. If you don’t want your comments to be made public, please specify.

Change from one week ago: ↓ 0.2 points (-27.8 points)

Change from one month ago: ↓ 0.8 points (-27.2 points)

[ Average includes: Ipsos/Reuters: 32 percent approve – 66 percent disapprove; Echelon Insights: 40 percent approve – 59 percent disapprove; American Research Group: 29 percent approve – 67 percent disapprove; NPR/Marist: 38 percent approve – 61 percent disapprove; New York Times/ Siena: 34 percent approve – 60 percent disapprove ]

Change from one week ago: ↓ 1 point (D +9 points)

Change from one month ago: ↓ 1.4 points (D+9.4 points)

[ Average includes: Ipsos/Reuters: 53 percent Democratic – 44 percent Republican; Echelon Insights: 51 percent Democratic – 46 percent Republican; NPR/Marist: 52 percent Democratic – 44 percent Republican; New York Times/Siena: 52 percent Democratic – 41 percent Republican; CNBC: 52 percent Democratic – 45 percent Republican ]

Writer Terrence Doyle on the significance of a 1993 crime that, now forgotten, shocked the sports world. Dirt : “It feels like a Patient Zero event. It was a physical manifestation of a logic that has since become our default: the idea that an athlete is not a human to be witnessed, but a data point to be managed, edited, or deleted. Günter Parche … loved the order of it. … He used a blade to manipulate the rankings when the world had … gone out of alignment. This impulse … has since been somehow both decentralized and institutionalized. … We’ve perfected the art of looking past the person to stare at the projection. … The athlete is no longer met as a human body moving through uncertainty, but as a model. And when that model breaks, the response is … correction—a demand that the physical world realign itself with the numbers that arrived first. … This is a war on the witness. … To consider Monica Seles today is … a defense of aesthetic brilliance against cold data.”

PRIME CUTS: WHAT TO EXPECT WHEN YOU’RE ELECTING

Poll closings: Eastern parts of Kentucky and Indiana

Key race: Kentucky’s 6th Congressional District

Fayette County, Ky. — Population: 329,751; County seat: Lexington; 2022 results R: 61.8 percent; D: 38.2 percent

Kentucky’s 6th Congressional District: Incumbent: Andy Barr (R, retiring to run for Senate); Contest: Zach Dembo (D) / Ralph Alvarado (R); Republican seat since 2013; 2024 result: Trump +15 points

7 PM EST: SOUTHEASTERN CONFIDENCE INTERVAL

Poll closings: Most of Florida, Georgia, remainder of Indiana and Kentucky, South Carolina, Virginia and Vermont

Key races: Georgia gubernatorial, Georgia Senate, South Carolina Senate, Vermont gubernatorial and Virginia’s 1st and 2nd districts

At stake: Four Senate seats, three governorships and 63 House seats

Gwinnett County, Ga. — Population: 957,062; County seat: Lawrenceville; 2022 results R: 48.6 percent; D: 51.4 percent

York County, S.C. — Population: 282,090; County seat: York; 2022 results R: 62.9 percent; 37.0 percent

Virginia Beach, Va. — Population: 453,737; County seat: Virginia Beach; 2022 result R: 56 percent; D: 43.8 percent

Georgia governor: Incumbent: Brian Kemp (R, term limited); Contest: Rick Jackson (R) / Keisha Lance Bottoms (D); Republican seat since 2003; 2024 result: Trump +2.2 points

Georgia Senate: Incumbent: Jon Ossoff (D, elected in 2020); Contest: Mike Collins (R); Democratic seat since 2021; 2024 result: Trump +2.2 points

Vermont governor: Incumbent: Phil Scott (R); Contest: Amanda Janoo (D); Republican seat since 2017; 2024 result: Kamala Harris +31.5 points

Virginia’s 1st Congressional District: Incumbent: Rob Wittman (R, elected in 2006); Contest: Shannon Taylor (D); Republican seat since 2007; 2024 result: Trump +5 points

Virginia’s 2nd Congressional District: Incumbent: Jen Kiggans (R, elected in 2022); Contest: Elaine Luria (D); Republican seat since 2023; 2024 result: Trump +0.2 points

7:30 PM EST: HILLBILLY ELEGY OR THE HEART OF MAGA?

Poll closings: North Carolina, Ohio and West Virginia

Key races: Ohio Senate, gubernatorial and 7th Congressional District; North Carolina Senate and 1st and 11th districts

At stake: Three Senate seats, one governorship and 31 House seats

Mahoning County, Ohio — Population: 228,614; County seat: Youngstown; 2022 result R: 52.9 percent; D: 46.86 percent

Butler County, Ohio — Population: 400,128; County seat: Hamilton; 2022 result R: 52.9 percent; D: 46.86 percent

Nash County, N.C. — Population: 99,365; County seat: Nashville; 2022 result R: 50.5 percent; D: 47.3 percent

Ohio Senate: Incumbent: Jon Husted (R, appointed in 2025); Contest: Sherrod Brown (D); Republican seat since 2023; 2024 result: Trump +11.2 points

Ohio governor: Incumbent: Mike DeWine (R, term limited); Contest: Vivek Ramaswamy (R) / Amy Acton (D); Republican seat since 2011; 2024 result: Trump +11.2 points

Ohio’s 7th Congressional District: Incumbent: Max Miller (R); Contest: Brian Poindexter (D) Republican seat since 2023; 2024 result: Trump +11 points

North Carolina Senate: Incumbent: Thom Tillis (R, retiring); Contest: Michael Whatley (R) / Roy Cooper (D); Republican seat since 2015; 2024 result: Trump +3.21 points

North Carolina’s 1st Congressional District: Incumbent: Don Davis (D); Contest: Laurie Buckhout (R); Democratic seat since 2023; 2024 result: Trump +12 (new map estimate); Redistricting: North Carolina’s 2025 map made it more Republican

North Carolina’s 11th Congressional District: Incumbent: Chuck Edwards (R, retiring); Contest: Jamie Ager (D) / Jennifer Balkcom (R); Republican seat since 2023; 2024 result: Trump +12 points; Redistricting: North Carolina adopted a new map in 2025, aimed mainly at the 1st District

Poll closings: Alabama, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, eastern Kansas, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, most of Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Jersey, eastern North Dakota, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, eastern South Dakota, Tennessee, most of Texas and the remainder of Florida

Key races: Florida gubernatorial and 14th Congressional District; Maine Senate; Mississippi Senate; New Hampshire gubernatorial and Senate

At stake: 12 Senate seats, 12 governorships, 161 House seats

York County, Maine — Population: 222,434; County seat: Alfred; 2022 result R: 42.5 percent; D: 55.7 percent

Madison County, Miss. — Population: 116,298; County seat: Canton; 2018 result R: 58.5 percent; D: 39.5 percent

Maine Senate: Incumbent: Susan Collins (R, first elected in 1996); Contest: Troy Jackson (D); Republican seat since 1979; 2024 result: Harris +6.9 points

New Hampshire Senate: Incumbent: Jeanne Shaheen (D, retiring); Contest: John Sununu (R) / Chris Pappas (D); Democratic seat since 2009; 2024 result: Harris +2.8 points

New Hampshire governor: Incumbent: Kelly Ayotte (R, first elected in 2024); Contest: Cinde Warmington (D); Republican seat since 2017; 2024 result: Harris +2.8 points

Florida governor: Incumbent: Ron DeSantis (R, term limited); Contest: Byron Donalds (R) / David Jolly (D); Republican seat since 1999; 2024 result: Trump +13.1 points

Florida’s 14th Congressional District: Incumbent: Kathy Castor (D); Contest: Mike Beltran (R); Democratic seat since 2007; 2024 result: Trump +11 (new map); Redistricting: Florida’s 2026 map made it more Republican

Mississippi Senate: Incumbent: Cindy Hyde-Smith (R, appointed in 2018); Contest: Scott Colom (D); Republican seat since 1979; 2024 result: Trump +22.9 points

8:30 PM EST: A 2028 DARK HORSE ON THE TRACK

At stake: One Senate seat, one governorship and four House seats

Arkansas governor: Incumbent: Sarah Huckabee Sanders (R, first elected in 2022); Contest: Fredrick Love (D); Republican seat since 2003; 2024 result: Trump +30.6 points

Poll closings: Arizona, Colorado, Iowa, western Kansas, Louisiana, Nebraska, New Mexico, New York, Wisconsin, Wyoming and the remainders of Michigan, North Dakota, South Dakota and Texas

Key races: Texas Senate, gubernatorial and 34th Congressional District; Michigan Senate and 4th Congressional District; Iowa Senate, gubernatorial and 1st and 3rd districts; Kansas Senate; Minnesota Senate; Nebraska Senate; New York’s 17th Congressional District

At Stake: 11 Senate seats, 13 governorships, 82 House seats

Tarrant County, Texas — Population: 2,248,466; County seat: Fort Worth; 2022 results R: 54.8 percent; D: 43.9 percent

Genesee County, Mich. — Population: 401,093; County seat: Flint; 2022 results: R: 50.4 percent; D: 49.4 percent

Boone County, Iowa — Population: 26,799; County seat: Boone; 2022 result: R: 56 percent; D: 43.8 percent

Wyandotte County, Kan. — Population: 170,597; County seat: Kansas City; 2022 result: R: 60 percent; D: 37 percent

Texas Senate: Incumbent: John Cornyn (R, lost nomination); Contest: Ken Paxton (R) / James Talarico (D); Republican seat since 1961; 2024 result: Trump +13.7 points

Texas governor: Incumbent: Greg Abbott (R, first elected in 2014); Contest: Gina Hinojosa (D); Republican seat since 1991; 2024 result: Trump +13.7 points

Texas’s 34th Congressional District: Incumbent: Vicente Gonzalez (D); Contest: Eric Flores (R); Democratic seat since 2017; 2024 result: Trump +10 (new map); Redistricting: Texas’s 2025 map made it more Republican; Trump carried the old version by about 5 points

Michigan Senate: Incumbent: Gary Peters (D, retiring); Contest: Abdul El-Sayed (D) / Mike Rogers (R); Democratic seat since 1979; 2024 result: Trump +1.4

Michigan’s 4th Congressional District: Incumbent: Bill Huizenga (R); Contest: Sean McCann (D); Republican seat since 2011; 2024 result: Trump +6; Redistricting: none (same map as 2024)

Iowa Senate: Incumbent: Joni Ernst (R, retiring); Contest: Ashley Hinson (R) / Josh Turek (D); Republican seat since 2008; 2024 result: Trump +13.2 points

Iowa governor: Incumbent: Kim Reynolds (R, retiring); Contest: Zach Lahn (R) / Rob Sand (D); Republican seat since 2023; 2024 result: Trump +13.2 points

Iowa’s 1st Congressional District: Incumbent: Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R); Contest: Christina Bohannan (D) / Michael Bridgford (I); Republican seat since 2021; 2024 result: Trump +8.5 points; Redistricting: none (same map as 2024)

Iowa’s 3rd Congressional District: Incumbent: Zach Nunn (R); Contest: Sarah Trone Garriott (D); Republican seat since 2023; 2024 result: Trump +4.5 points; Redistricting: none (same map as 2024)

Minnesota Senate: Incumbent: Tina Smith (D, retiring); Contest: Peggy Flanagan (D), Michele Tafoya (R); Democratic seat since 2009; 2024 result: Harris +4.2 points

Kansas Senate: Incumbent: Roger Marshall (R, elected in 2020); Contest: Adam Hamilton (D); Republican seat since 1919; 2024 result: Trump +16.1 points

Nebraska Senate: Incumbent: Pete Ricketts (R, elected in 2022); Contest: Dan Osborn (I); Republican seat since 1997; 2024 result: Trump +20 points

New York’s 17th Congressional District: Incumbent: Mike Lawler (R); Contest: Cait Conley (D); Republican seat since 2023; 2024 result: Harris +0.6 points

Arizona’s 6th Congressional District: Incumbent: Juan Ciscomani (R); Contest: JoAnna Mendoza (D) / Ciscomani (R), plus Jereme Peters (Libertarian); Republican seat since 2023; 2024 result: Trump +0.7 points; Redistricting: none (same map as 2024)

Colorado’s 8th Congressional District: Incumbent: Gabe Evans (R); Contest: Manny Rutinel (D); Republican seat since 2025; 2024 result: Trump +1.8 points

You should email us! Write to WholeHogPolitics@TheHill.com with your tips, kudos, criticisms, insights, rediscovered words, wonderful names, recipes, and, always, good jokes. Please include your real name — at least first and last — and hometown. Make sure to let us know in the email if you want to keep your submission private. My colleague, the high-propensity Camille Miner , and I will look for your emails and then share the most interesting ones and my responses here. Clickety clack!

FOR DESSERT: SMOKEY AND THE (RINGTAILED) BANDIT

CTV News : “A Montreal man who says he is on the run from provincial authorities for housing a raccoon has taken his pet for a rabies vaccination. Louka Berman took the raccoon named Pepper to meet the owner of a refuge north of Montreal on Monday and get the vaccination. Quebec is currently dealing with an outbreak of raccoon rabies, although it has not yet reached Montreal. Pepper went viral online in September after Berman posted a video of himself riding a bike with the raccoon on his back. He says provincial environmental enforcement officers have visited his home with a warrant to seize the raccoon, but have not managed to capture the mammal. The provincial environment ministry did not immediately respond to questions sent on Monday morning. Berman says he has collected thousands of dollars through online fundraising campaigns since he first started posting about Pepper and hopes to use the money to build a wildlife sanctuary in the city.”